I noticed that if I give PING the name of the folder with all the little image files (*.001, .002, etc.) when I'm trying to restore the image, then it can't find the image. I have to go up a directory.

It would be nice if PING detected that I had done some extra work and just found the image automatically.

In addition, while I was restoring an image, I noticed that when I pressed the asterisk key, nothing happened.

Howdy,I've had only one very short session with ping thus far. These are the pros and cons that I encountered:Pro:Properly identified opensolaris zfs partition. It also correctly saw ext3, eext4, and linux swap plus NTFS and FAT32 partitions. I was more concerned about the zfs, since I haven't seen any imagers advertise recognition of that filesystem.

Con:1. Couldn't access BIOS information. Motherboard/CPU is an Intel D410DP Atom, with Intel firmware. It is a new release from Intel -- if I can offer some information to assist the development with this chipset, please let me know.2. Requests to "Cancel" were ignored with a CLI text info string stating that I needed to use to space bar to make a selection. I eventually down-powered the system.

After reading the forum a bit, I am concerned about the issues with boot utility partitions as found in earlier Dell PCs. The Dell PCs that I've encountered over the last two years have favored a separate CD for that function vice the partition.

I believe that this will work for my needs, though time will tell.Thanks...

Been using PING (3.00.03 currently) for a little while now for imaging mixed Windows/Linux and Linux only systems, exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. Much appreciated!

Just one minor wrinkle has come up recently when attempting to image an encrypted Linux drive (imaging the encrypted data itself, not the files within).

Apparently when PING doesn't understand the "CRYPT-LUKS" file system on my /dev/hda2, it abandons using PartImage (which I picked) and falls back to using zSplit. *But* zSplit is trying to compress the encrypted data (with I assume its default level of -6), when I specifically said NO COMPRESSION, recognizing that there's no point trying to compress encrypted data!

Could the compression "yes/no" result also be passed to the zSplit fallback option, through the "-0" option? It would save a lot of CPU time!

Also some of these standalone LANDrive NAS boxes, which are handy to image to, don't seem to quite support CIFS right. I have one that I cannot open the shares on from Linux (PING or Slackware) without the addition of "nounix,noperm" to the mount "-o" options list. Without that, you get "mount error 20 = Not a directory" or a whole load of errors about "Malformed UNIX options" ??? . Maybe these two options could be added, if not to the first attempt to mount, then to a second "try again" mount if the first failed? As a workaround for this, I have to come out of the PING interface at the start, and go

Finally, for the paranoid, is there any way to create an MD5sum of each of the backup files (the first-sectors, bios, and each of the partition split files) *as they are being created*? So that you know that what has arrived at the backup server is what was sent? These MD5's can be used also to verify the data if it's been burnt to CD/DVD. I always create .md5 files, at the sending end, to accompany a backup .tgz tarball or a partition-split backup when doing stuff manually. This ensures that there was no network glitch or otherwise that damaged a file. It's no good creating them afterwards at the backup server, or by reading back from the backup server, as the data may already be compromised. It would be a good confidence check.

On the subject of encrypted drives, and also RAID arrays, can the "cryptsetup" and "mdadm" tools and support be added into a future PING release, because it's impossible to back up to a local drive (which is an encrypted RAID array attached to the PC) without them!

I am a computer tech that has been in this business since his teenaged years, and continue on in my 30s. I work with a team of 9 people, run my own business, and have administered computers for the canadian auto workers union, GM, Ford, countless doctors and dentists and end users. now that that's out of the way...

I like the idea of an open source raw partition backup software, however...

yours is SORELY lacking in a few things, but not in effort.

99% of what Symantec Ghost is used for is to CLONE A DRIVE to a larger or faster drive. I do this THOUSANDS of times a year. I also use ghost to deploy duplicate systems for offices.

Creating an image first instead of simply allowing a disk to disk copy with the ability to extend the partition is very wasteful in a time sensitive business such as computer repair.

Add a disk to disk direct clone utility to PING. Allow it to overwrite the primary drive in the system. Prompt a lot. - or myself or anyone else who is seriously involved in computer repair will not use it, ever.

There is NO way to check which drive is which via SERIAL NUMBER. Today, I was faced with a situation where I was forced to use PING. I was unable to determine which drive was which in the system and be COMPLETELY SURE. Sometimes ESATA drives show up as SDA and not b. Sometimes they don't. Since the drives were exactly the same model, there was no way to determine if I was making an image on the correct drive. Add serial number display to each drive so that we know which we're writing to - or nobody in my office will use it.

I tried to make an image of my laptop drive, as I am getting a new, larger one delivered today. I fought for a couple of hours before finding out that the partimage.zip not mentioned in the documentation was critical to the process. Why can this zip not be contained in the .iso and uploaded to the destination in the program itself?

Then I started my image, and left it for all evening, and went to bed. This morning it was still going, making the checksums file. I left it for a number of hours still, and after a while I checked the file: it was recursing into the Windows 7 Application Data\ folder about 6 or 7 times by the time I cancelled it. I'm not sure why but you should check for recursion loops.

Just started it again and it's chugging along. Overall a nice tool but has some rough edges.

I am putting in feedback because it is requested, not because I want to complain. This is a free product, and as such I really appreciate the time and effort that has been put into it for the general welfare of the public. I know that I, for one, just would not have the time or energy to accomplish this myself.

That said, I think that this is probably very misleading in the description of the product. While it IS free, I don't think that it gives license to promote it as a better product than it is. It gives a number of advantages over GHOST and is listed as being a good replacement for it, but I would heartily disagree with this. Ghost allows you to copy disk to disk without making an image (if you so choose). Ghost allows you to determine the identity of the drive with MUCH more certainty. While I have nearly 20 years of system admin experience, not everyone who wants to clone a hard drive is going to know for certain which drive partition SDA2 is located on. I have found (for those who want to be certain) that it is extremely handy to name the partitions in Windows first, which makes PING much easier to use.

Ghost allows you to re-size partitions on the fly (i.e., you can put a formerly large partition on to a much smaller one if there is enough space for the data, and you can put a small partition into a much larger one if you now have a bigger drive).

Ghost allows you to browse through folders and files to find what you are looking for, rather than forcing you to memorize the exact folder/file name that you originally made (perhaps months before).

While this DOES have an option to blank the password, it is several menus down in the "restore" area, which doesn't make logical sense. It *is* a nice tool, although there are plenty of Linux tools to do this already. I'm not sure it is a big selling point for a tool that is unrelated.

That said, PING *is* a great tool that does exactly what the initial parameters and design functionality was meant to do. I just think that it would be better if it were described in terms unrelated to Ghost, as they bear very limited similarity in either form or function.